Wallet drop: World's least honest cities

By Marnie Hunter, CNN

Updated 11:19 PM ET, Tue September 24, 2013

World's most honest and dishonest cities16 photos

Helsinki, Finland -- No. 1 in honesty – A dozen wallets were dropped in each of the following cities as part of a Reader's Digest experiment. Each contained a cell phone number, the equivalent of $50 in cash, coupons, business cards and a family photo. In Helsinki, Finland, 11 out of 12 wallets were returned, putting the city at the top of the honesty heap. "Finns are naturally honest," one of the good Samaritans who returned a wallet told Reader's Digest.

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World's most honest and dishonest cities16 photos

Mumbai, India – In Mumbai, nine out of 12 wallets were returned.

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Budapest, Hungary – Eight out of 12 wallets were returned in Budapest.

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New York – New Yorkers also returned eight out of the 12 wallets dropped. "Everyone says New Yorkers are unfriendly, but they're really quite a nice people," wallet returner Richard Hamilton told Reader's Digest.

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World's most honest and dishonest cities16 photos

Moscow – In Moscow, seven out of 12 wallets were returned.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands – The residents of Amsterdam also returned seven out of 12 wallets.

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Berlin – Half of the 12 wallets were reunited with Reader's Digest reporters in Berlin.

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Ljubljana, Slovenia – In Ljubljana, half of the wallets also were returned. "My parents taught me how important being honest is," said 21-year-old Manca Smolej.

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London – London's residents fell below the 50% line in wallet reunification. Seven of the 12 dropped in London were pocketed.

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Warsaw, Poland – Only five of 12 dropped were returned in Warsaw, too.

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Bucharest, Romania – Only a third of those dropped in Bucharest were returned.

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Rio de Janeiro – Rio denizens also returned only a third of the 12 wallets left unattended across their city.

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Zurich, Switzerland – Zurich's good Samaritan levels also left something to be desired with four out of 12 wallets returned.

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Prague, Czech Republic – In Prague, just a quarter of the 12 wallets made it back to the wallet-droppers.

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Madrid – Just two of the wallets dropped in Madrid were returned.

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Lisbon, Portugal – And the city with the lowest rate of wallet return? Lisbon, Portugal. Just one of the 12 wallets was returned, by a couple visiting from the Netherlands.

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Story highlights

Reader's Digest dropped wallets in 16 cities and waited to see how people would respond

Nearly half of the wallets were returned

Click through the gallery above to find out which city's citizens are least honest

Reporters from the magazine dropped wallets in parks, on sidewalks and near shopping malls in international cities from New York to Mumbai and waited to see how people would respond. Each wallet contained the equivalent of $50, a cell phone number, business cards, coupons and a family photo.

Bottom line? Nearly half -- 47% -- of the wallets were returned.

"If you find money, you can't assume it belongs to a rich man," said Ursula Smist, who returned one of the five wallets recovered in London. "It might be the last bit of money a mother has to feed her family," said Smist, who is originally from Poland. The other seven wallets dropped in London remain at large.

Of the 102 wallets subjected to the old "finders keepers" rule, one was pocketed by a male Zurich tram driver whose employer runs the city's lost and found office. In Warsaw, five of 12 wallets were returned while the other seven were pocketed by women. The magazine concluded that gender and age are unpredictable when it comes to sussing out honesty.

"The most surprising discovery for the team at Reader's Digest is that honesty is not a relative," said Raimo Moysa, editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest International Magazines. "For all the people who returned wallets, it was the only way to act in such a situation."

" 'It is something you do naturally,' said 30-year-old optician's assistant in Prague when we asked about why she returned the wallet. A 73-year-old grandmother in Rio de Janeiro expressed the same sentiment by saying simply: 'Because it is not mine,' " Moysa wrote in an e-mail response.

Check out the gallery above for a ranking of the most -- and least -- honest cities in North and South America, Asia and Europe.